]]>Apple recently introduced multiple software updates and a removal tool for the “Flashback” threat that takes advantage of an exploit in Java on Macs. For users of the current version of Apple’s desktop OS, Lion 10.7.3, and the previous OS, Snow Leopard 10.6.8, Apple’s got you covered. For anything older than that Apple’s current recommendation is to disable Java. That’s wrong, and here’s why.

Apple’s “solution” of disabling Java on versions prior to Snow Leopard isn’t realistic for users that still intend to keep their Mac on the Internet, since web-based Java is still popular, especially for proprietary corporate applications. If you are on a Leopard (10.5) or older system, Apple’s solution means that you could try to enable Java only while you are using websites that require it and then immediately turn it off afterward (a common example of usage is for remote control programs such as GotoMyPC and Logmein). To be fully secure though, the better solution is to upgrade your OS. However, upgrading your Mac’s OS could introduce incompatibilities with existing software that will require further costs to upgrade. Plus, if a user hasn’t upgraded to Snow Leopard — an admittedly old OS — yet, they may have a good reason for doing so.

Apple updates its operating system at a much faster pace than Microsoft. Leopard was superseded by Snow Leopard in August 2009 and Windows XP was superseded by Vista in November 2006, yet Microsoft is still providing critical security updates for XP until April 2014. Microsoft is providing more security updates for more versions of their operating system while Apple is starting to abandon users after less than three years.

To be fair, a majority of Mac users have already moved to either Snow Leopard or Lion, according to estimates from Net Market Share so most Mac users will be protected from this security flaw after installing Apple’s latest updates. Windows XP, meanwhile, is still on a majority of PCs according to that same study, even though its successor, Windows 7, was released in July 2009. Microsoft is doing this right by continuing to provide security updates for its older operating systems, which sort of makes sense given Microsoft’s constant battle with malware over the years. But Apple isn’t.

With Apple’s accelerated OS release cycle, leaving Leopard’s Java security unsupported after less than three years is unfair to users and a potential class action lawsuit waiting to happen since Apple’s extended warranty (AppleCare) is designed to support the Mac for three years. That MacBook you bought in May 2009 has a problem that Apple knows about, and Apple’s solution is to simply disable portions of the OS provided by Apple for your computer.

At the very least, Apple should be required to either patch a security flaw in any computer still under AppleCare or provide a free update to a currently supported version like they are doing for MobileMe users. Two years is simply too short of an upgrade cycle to expect users to keep up with in order to maintain the security of their systems.

If Apple continues this “current and previous version” approach towards security, Snow Leopard users are going to miss out on security updates when Mountain Lion 10.8 comes out this summer, only two years after they upgraded to Snow Leopard. Apple needs to step up to the plate and provide security updates for at least three years — otherwise Mac users could be more secure wiping an older Mac OS on that Intel-based Mac and installing Windows XP instead! At least then they’ll have until April 2014 before their computer turns into an unsecured ticking time bomb.

]]>The preview release of Mountain Lion is available to registered members of Apple’s Developer program starting Thursday, and it includes some significant changes to the way Mac software is designed, built and distributed. While many details are still under wraps, and there will certainly be some surprise additions revealed before the final version is ready, the information Apple has publicly announced so far does give some indication of where the future of Mac software development is headed.

When Snow Leopard came out two years after Leopard, it provided a lot of UI refinements and some important under-the-hood upgrades for developers, like full 64-bit support, Blocks in Objective-C, Grand Central Dispatch, QuickTime X, OpenCL, native Exchange support and more. Mountain Lion is a similar upgrade — it looks to improve on Lion with a lot of UI refinements and some significant changes for developers. But instead of under-the-hood improvements, the most significant changes appear to be out in the cloud this time around.

Here’s the list of changes that Apple is rolling out, and how they will affect developers:

iCloud

iCloud can store both documents and key-value pairs. The important thing to keep in mind here is that the developer is responsible for collisions and conflict resolution between different devices updating the cloud. Documents have a dialog to let users select which version of a file they want to use. If you need to merge document changes, you’re on your own. Developers will need to think really carefully about how to manage conflicts when saving to iCloud if you are syncing data between multiple devices/computers. It’s not clear yet if apps signed by the Mac developer program certs can access data stored by apps signed by the iOS developer program certs. We will have to wait and see what Apple intends here.

While Snow Leopard added Exchange, and Lion added iOS-like features, I think Mountain Lion will be remembered as the “iCloudification” of the Mac.

Game Center

Something like 25 percent of titles in the Mac App Store are games, and the percentage is also quite high on iOS. I think there is a major opportunity here for developers to port games from iOS and keep high scores, achievements and friend lists in sync. iCloud support also means keeping saved games and game states in sync across devices. I’m not sure Game Center will ever be as popular with gamers as Steam and Xbox Live, but it could be great for casual gaming. I’d love to see someone come up with Xcode achievements so I could compare KLOCs with my friends.

Developer IDs, App Signing, Gatekeeper & Sandboxing

A lot has been written about sandboxing, which is coming to the Mac App Store and Lion, in advance of Mountain Lion’s release. I don’t think I’ll try to add anything to the discussion except to point out that Gatekeeper should help to educate users on what the differences are. It appears that you’ll be able to sign your apps — and gain the increased trust of users — without having to submit to the App Store and agree to sandboxing. Of course, to use the iCloud features and other goodies like notifications, you’ll probably want to go with the App Store anyway. Overall, I think this will end up being a good thing, despite the growing pains endured during the rollout.

This seems like a very big deal to me. Partly because Gatekeeper takes a more proactive stance against malware, preventing malware developers from producing new software which infects systems rather than always retroactively tracking down the bad software and preventing it from spreading further.

But even more important to me is that while designing this feature in a post-Mac App Store world, Apple went out of their way to build a mechanism which still supports developers who distribute software through channels other than the Mac App Store. It would have been much easier for them to simply say “to get malware protection, you must use the Mac App Store; otherwise any software you use is at your own risk” — but instead they’ve introduced a new mechanism for identifying trusted developers who distribute software outside the Mac App Store’s curated experience.

Color me relieved!

Sharing

Integrating single sign-on for Twitter in iOS led to a marked increase in people signing up for Twitter accounts. Just as Twitter integration didn’t kill the sales of dedicated Twitter clients on iOS, I would expect that the market on OS X won’t be affected much. Of course, Twitter isn’t the only way to share things. Flickr, Vimeo, etc. are there as well. What I’m really curious to see is if developers will be allowed to extend the sharing sheet by registering their own apps on the system. That could be awesome.

Apple is trying to make it easy to add sharing to an app, but the real issue here is figuring out if your app needs Twitter integration or not. I’m not sure I need to tweet my word count from within BBEdit, for example, but I do like the idea of tweeting what I’m reading right from within Safari, or what I’m looking at from within iTunes or the Mac App Store. I’m hopeful about this feature, as long as developers are judicious in putting it to good use.

Notifications

I think this is one area that developers should really work to adopt. I’m curious to find out more if Apple will allow online services to send notifications to apps as you can on iOS (where Facebook sends a notification to the Facebook app, and Strategery tells you when you’ve been defeated, etc.). Because of the infrastructure needed to handle those types of notices (especially at Internet scale), I would look into Push IO and similar services to leverage so you don’t have to build it all on your own.

What Else?

I’m sure there will be much more to come as Apple makes their plans more public closer to the summer launch, but I think there is a lot of good stuff here that developers can use to improve and build on their Mac apps. I think that iCloud integration will have the biggest long-term impact on OS X, but the refinements in app signing, sharing and notifications will be important features for developers as well.

What do you think will be the biggest change to the ways you make Mac software today?

Apple’s latest desktop operating system, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, is doing well in its early days, nearing the almost four-year old OS X 10.5 Leopard in popularity, according to new OS market share numbers released Thursday by Net Applications. Mac OS X 10.5 Snow Leopard, released in mid-2009, is still the most popular version of the Apple desktop operating system out there with 3.46 of the overall market.

In just a month since its release, Lion has a 1.03 percent share of the overall desktop OS picture, while Leopard is still in use by 1.17 percent of Internet visitors, 160 million of which are the source of the Net Applications data. Snow Leopard and Leopard both gave ground to the newer operating system, dropping from 4 and 1.24 percent percent shares respectively in August, while Lion’s cut rose from just 0.33 percent.

When compared to the adoption of previous new versions of OS X, Lion adoption is already ahead of the curve. Snow Leopard, for example, saw only 0.78 percent share after its first full month of availability, passing 1 percent during its second month on the market. Both cost $29.99 on release, but the difference this time could be the digital distribution of Lion through the Mac App Store, which may have led more customers to upgrade earlier. At the very least, it shows that opting for the App Store as a primary delivery vehicle for major software upgrades (albeit with pricey physical media backup options) isn’t having a negative effect on Lion adoption.

Whether your hard drive has failed or your OS has become corrupt, you may occasionally have to reinstall the Mac OS. Fortunately, Apple does a beautiful job of making installing or reinstalling your operating system relatively painless compared to our Windows brethren. Unfortunately, it’s still a painfully slow process running off a DVD. Not to mention, optical media can get scratched easily (one of the reasons for the long install times is Apple’s optical media verification).

To solve this problem, I recommend backing up your Mac OS installation DVD to a hard drive. Doing so protects it and allows you to install the OS quickly, as well as run Disk Utility on your main drive or reset a password. I keep a hard drive with Leopard and Snow Leopard installers so I can reinstall or repair multiple OS versions easily.

Getting Started

To start, you’ll need a copy of Snow Leopard (or whatever OS version you want to install). Open Disk Utility, which is typically found in /Applications/Utilities. On the left-hand side you see your disk appear as “Mac OS X Install DVD.” Go ahead and click the New Image icon to make a copy of the DVD. Save the file at your preferred location (I have a Archive folder on my hard drive for installer disks).

Prepare the Drive

Now that you have a digital copy of your installer, the next step is to prepare the hard drive you will use for the restoration. In this example, I connected an old 160GB hard drive from my MacBook into an external case. I’m dividing this particular one into three partitions: one for Leopard, one for Snow Leopard, and one for other installers such as iLife. I could put Tiger on it, but I get few requests for that OS. Since I want this to boot Intel-based Macs, I’m going to click options and make sure GUID Partition is selected. I’m making the partitions 10GB, but you can choose any size above 8.5GB to play it safe. You could also use a USB flash drive, but those can be slow. I suggest sticking with a hard drive-based solution for speed reasons.

Restore the Image

After preparing your drive, you’ll need to restore the image to your hard drive partition. Click the Restore tab in Disk Utility. For Source, click Image… and choose that image you created earlier. For Destination, drag the partition you want to restore the OS to, then click “Restore.”

You might get an error saying, “Restore Failure: Could not find any scan information. The source image needs to imagescanned before it can be restored.” If you get this message, go ahead and go to the Images menu and choose “Scan Image for Restore.” Choose the disk image you are using as source. Now click Restore; it shouldn’t ask again.

In my example, I’ll do the same for the second partition and put Leopard on it. Both partitions will be named Mac OS X Install DVD. That can be confusing on boot, so I suggest you copy the icon from each installer CD and paste it onto the respective hard disk volumes. You’ll easily be able to tell from the icon alone which OS you are installing. If you hold down Option during the startup of your Mac, you’ll be presented with those icons as well so you know which installer will boot, and you can go ahead and install the Mac OS the normal way.

I love Time Machine for its simplicity and the fact that it’s free. Apple did the right thing in creating a backup utility that was integrated into the OS and was actually useful. Anyone who has fought with Windows Backup can tell you, this has been needed for a long time. Apple created a beautiful backup utility and then made money on hardware that seamlessly works with it. For the home user, nothing could be more simple.

In the office environment however, users tend to backup to server shares and not local external drives. So, let’s take a look at how to use Time Machine over a network.

Setting it Up

It’s easy to do this in Leopard Xserve by sharing a backup folder. Under Server Admin, you can check the box “Enable as Time Machine backup destination.”

This worked great in Leopard but in Snow Leopard, Time Machine no longer saw this as an available destination. Luckily, changing a property for System Preferences solves this.

This tells Time Machine to treat network shares as possible backup locations. Now, when I go to select a disk in the Time Machine preferences, I see my mounted AFP share listed.

Restoring

So that’s how you get the Time Machine backup working, but what about restoring. Most people don’t test the restore functionality but it’s the most important thing you can do. To restore a Time Machine backup over an AFP connection, first boot off the Snow Leopard install DVD. Then, Launch Terminal by clicking on the Utilities menu. In the terminal window, type the following commands.

This will mount your AFP share and make it available to restore from. Quit Terminal and then run “Restore from Backup” from the Utilities menu. You will see your backup listed and you should now be able to restore from it.

Time Machine is a very nice utility and if you aren’t using it, you should be. I even have other Xserves backing themselves up to this share using Time Machine. Sure, there are third-party applications out there can do so much more, but I’m for just getting the job done. Integration with the OS is also important to me. It’s the main reasons I use Safari as my main browser. As with all backup solutions though, you need to test the restore functionality once in a while. If anything, you might sleep better at night knowing your data is not only safe but recoverable.

With the release of 10.6.2, Apple killed unsupported support for the Atom processor — the processor used in low-cost netbooks. Certain models of netbooks could run OS X quite easily, and people used them to make the Little Netbook Apple Refuses to Make. While it’s a stretch to say Apple has killed the hackintosh market, it’s certainly proving it isn’t going to sit around and ignore it.

The reaction has been interesting and varies from casual indifference, to the defense of Apple’s action, to thinking Apple cancelled Christmas. While I’ve been a vocal supporter of Apple’s right to continue to club Palm over the Pre syncing fiasco, I imagine it’ll sound hypocritical when I say I’m disappointed in Apple over this move.

Up until now, Apple’s stance with the hackintosh community has largely been don’t ask, don’t tell. The people who bought a netbook and, hopefully, bought a copy of OS X to install it, were aware of the risks of doing so. Getting it to run might involve waving a dead chicken at the screen, or it could be completely painless. However, the person undertaking this task knew of the risks. So, there was little harm done.

I’d like to take a look at some of the armchair theories I’ve seen, and offer my own armchair analysis of them.

Apple wasn’t happy with the (alleged) piracy

The piracy angle has two fronts: your interpretation of the EULA, and how many copies of OS X running on hackintoshes were purchased.

In terms of the EULA, while I know Apple strongly disagrees with this, my personal take is as long as I’ve bought a legal license of OS X (and if it’s an upgrade license like Snow Leopard, I have the requisite Leopard copy), if I want to install it on a piece of non-Apple gear as long as I don’t waste Apple’s or mine time with supporting it, I’m in the clear. Now, this is not legal advice in any way, and all the usual disclaimers. It may be a tenuous stretch, but in this case I don’t consider a person creating such a hackintosh a “pirate.”

The second front, though, has no defense. If you’re creating a hackintosh and download a torrent or borrow a buddy’s disc, and don’t own a corresponding license, you’re a pirate. Where things get gray is if you’re downloading a hacked OS X distro, but have a legal license, are you a pirate? I have no data on how many hackintoshes were running pirated OS X installs, and I don’t have any corresponding data on how many Snow Leopard installs are legal. That said, since Apple offers no copy protection, I’m going to say that piracy wasn’t a motivator.

Apple didn’t like seeing netbooks with Apple stickers on them

In the somewhat wonky world of Apple’s Land of Preventing User Confusion, I can actually see this one being a reason for doing this. Now, I go to a fairly technical university and the overall number of netbooks I’ve seen is small, and zero of them have been running OS X (unscientific poll taken while trying to find tables at the canteen and library). I’ve never actually seen a hackbook, much less one with an Apple sticker slapped on it. But there are enough pictures on Flickr of people doing this, so I can see Apple getting irate and going, “OK, enough already.” Who knows, maybe people were walking into Apple stores looking for “that cute little Apple laptop I saw the nice guy at the airport using.”

Apple doesn’t have products running the Atom chipset

I’ll buy this one. While having support for the chipset doesn’t hurt anything, it’s unnecessary code. Maybe Apple was thinking of using the chipset and decided against it. Maybe knowing support for that chipset was keeping Jobs up at night. If Apple does end up using the chipset, it’s easy enough to re-enable the code in the future. Which is about as close as I’ll get to mentioning the oft-rumored, never-promised Tablaslabawhatevah. Some have opined that by doing this code cleanup Apple didn’t know it was breaking Atom support. I don’t agree. While it’s possible there’s nothing evil about its intent, I think it was intentional.

The Psystar lawsuit forced its hands

Now we’re getting somewhere. Up until recently, creating a hackintosh was very much a do-it-yourself affair. You had to get the hardware and do the grunt work to get the OS on it. Granted, while it’s gotten a lot easier over the years and many sites have complete walkthroughs, it’s still an undertaking. Psystar, though, upped the ante. It recently released the Rebel EFI tool which, allegedly, will allow you to install OS X on darn near anything. It’s not a stretch to assume it’s going to sell a netbook running OS X. Given the lawsuit, I believe Apple did this to both be able to demonstrate to a court it has taken measures to prevent OS X from running on un-supported hardware, as well as eliminate a future product line from Psystar.

Like I said, I’m a little disappointed in Apple. But I can understand why it would cut the code for an unused chip. I’ve given some thought to getting a netbook and hackintoshing it, but after I got my new MacBook Pro a month or so ago, that desire faded away. I’m much happier using Apple-built hardware. I have a Dell Ultraportable laptop for work, and the small trackpad on that drives me nuts…I don’t want to think of one smaller.

]]>The intertubes are ablaze today with reports of a serious bug in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard that, under certain conditions, can destroy all of a user’s personal data.

The problem lies with Mac OS X’s Guest Account functionality, and was first reported at the beginning of September on Apple’s Support Discussions forum. Specifically, some Mac owners have found that after using the Guest account, and later logging-in to their usual primary account, all their personal data has been wiped clean. Everything. Documents, pictures, movies, music. The whole lot.

More worryingly, some users report that they didn’t even use their Guest account first — simply booting up their Mac normally resulted in an “out of the box” experience — default wallpaper, dock configuration and, again, a loss of all personal data.

From what the user community has managed to figure out, the bug occurs only in Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) with a Guest Account that was created in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). After upgrading to Snow Leopard, the Guest Account settings retain Leopard’s older spots, to coin a phrase. And there the problem lies.

Thankfully, and in a break from its usual behavior (that is, stubborn refusal to admit anything is wrong with their products) Apple yesterday delivered a statement to CNET that reads, “We are aware of the issue which occurs only in extremely rare cases and we are working on a fix.” OK, a few plus-points for finally admitting there’s a problem. Minus a few points for it taking over a month to do so. (Seriously, do we really think it took Apple this long to reproduce the problem? No. Of course not.) And minus a few hundred more for Apple not putting that crucial statement on its own support pages, which I would modestly suggest is vastly more professional and helpful to Mac owners who aren’t CNET or tech-press readers. But oh well — at least we got something.

Thankfully there are some steps everyone can take to minimize the risks of falling foul to this hugely worrying bug.

First off, have a recent and complete Time Machine backup of your personal account and all your data (but think twice if you’re using a Time Capsule that’s a little more than 17 months old).

Next, if the Guest Account was enabled before you upgraded to Snow Leopard, pop in to your System Preferences and disable it. To do so, follow the steps below.

In System Preferences, choose Accounts

Click the padlock icon to make changes - you may be prompted for your password

The icon will now indicate you can make changes

Click on the Guest Account icon

Un-check the box labeled "Allow guests to log in to this computer"

That’s it. Close System Preferences and restart your computer. When you next log in, you can choose whether or not you want to re-enable the Guest Account. Doing so after following these steps ought to be safe, since the Guest Account will be recreated with all-new Snow Leopard settings which, it’s assumed, won’t delete all your valuable personal data. But please note carefully — this is a community-generated ‘fix’ and not officially recommended or endorsed by Apple. It might work. It might not. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

Anecdotal Evidence Alert: I had my Guest account disabled on all my machines prior to upgrading to SL. In an heroic act of self sacrifice I’ve courageously enabled the Guest account on all of my Macs, then logged back in to my usual personal account. I haven’t lost a thing. Hardly a scientific test of the theory this problem occurs only with 10.5/Leopard flavoured Guest accounts, but encouraging, nonetheless.

Have you been hit by this bug? Can you offer a more technically sound workaround? Please share in the comments below.

]]>Just two weeks after being released, Snow Leopard is already setting records. According to NPD, sales are more than twice that of plain-old Leopard in its first two weeks, and nearly four times that of Tiger.

“Even though some considered Snow Leopard to be less feature-focused than the releases of Leopard or Tiger, the ease of upgrading to Snow Leopard and the affordable pricing made it a win-win for Apple computer owners — thus helping to push sales to record numbers” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD.

While it’s true Apple is not counting off 300 “new features,” as was done with Leopard, and it’s mostly true that Snow Leopard is an easy upgrade, at least after 10.6.1, the story here is really about price. At $29, Snow Leopard costs less than a quarter of the $129 price of Leopard or Tiger.

NPD further reports that the sales momentum has declined from the first week to the second by only around 25 percent, contrasting sharply with a decline of 60 percent for both Leopard and Tiger. NPD’s Stephen Baker suggests that Apple’s “aggressive pricing policies in this economic environment generate an outstanding consumer response,” but there is also money in volume. Macrumors previously reported on a research note from Piper Jaffray research analyst Gene Munster predicting as many as 5 million copies sold during the current quarter. That’s good news for the bottom line, but there may be another benefit for Apple in the low price of Snow Leopard.

While there are few new features in the user interface, Snow Leopard does make use of new technologies, like Grand Central. By encouraging users to upgrade through a lower price, the adoption of those technologies will occur sooner rather than later. An upgrade wave also makes it easier to discontinue supporting legacy technology associated with the PPC architecture, like Rosetta, now an optional install with Snow Leopard. Ultimately, this means the low price of Snow Leopard now will reap support savings for Apple in the future.

At $29, Snow Leopard appears to be a good deal for both consumers and the company. If there is a downside, it could come in trying to charge $129 for the next iteration of OS X. Good luck with that, Apple.

]]>In addition to the numerous refinements that Snow Leopard brings, among the first you’ll notice is an easier installation experience. Some options that experienced Apple users have come to know and love have been changed or relocated, resulting in an experience that is far less intimidating than installing Microsoft Windows.

Traditional OS X users may be familiar with some of the more advanced installation options beyond the usual “Upgrade Mac OS X.” Options such as “Erase and Install” and “Archive and Install” have been changed for Snow Leopard. To prevent users from accidentally erasing their hard drive, the erase and install functionality has been relegated to manual formatting via Disk Utility.

Should one need to archive and install (which is where your previous system files are archived in a separate location and a new system is installed in their place), the installer will it automatically when it detects an attempt to install the same operating system as is currently found on the Mac. When installation is complete, Snow Leopard cleans up after itself and doesn’t leave users with an ugly “Previous System” folder as before.

Trickery With Versions

With Snow Leopard’s “behind the scenes” archive and install process, it now automatically installs the current OS version number. For example, if someone is running 10.6.3 and reinstalls, when installation is complete they will still be using 10.6.3 instead of 10.6. This removes the need to run an hour of software updates, but it does present a potential problem. When “dot releases” come out, compatibility is sometimes affected, and users archive and install to revert back to a previous system version. Beyond erasing and installing, this doesn’t seem possible with Snow Leopard.

Wither Rosetta?

By default, when you install Snow Leopard, it will not install Rosetta, Apple’s technology to allow older PowerPC apps to run on Intel processors. As most applications are Universal and Snow Leopard itself requires an Intel processor, Apple is finally making big strides to leave behind the world of PowerPC. Should users still need Rosetta, it is available as an optional install.

QuickTime X vs QuickTime 7

Snow Leopard introduces Apple’s redesigned version of QuickTime, dubbed QuickTime X. Though several of the more popular third party plugins will work with QuickTime X out of the box, users may need to resort to QuickTime 7 and any plugins they’ve used with it for playing more specialized content (or you could just turn to the much more robust VLC).

Snow Leopard will include QuickTime 7 as an option, but will not install it by default unless users already have QuickTime 7 Pro on their system. Should you try to open a file in QuickTime X that requires QuickTime 7, Software Update will automatically download it for you if it’s not already present on the system.

Unanswered Questions

As mentioned earlier, it remains unclear whether Apple has a solution in place in case users install a “dot release” like 10.6.4 and wish to revert back. What we’ve heard about the archive and install seems to infer you would end up with 10.6.4 upon completion.

There’s also still some question as to how Snow Leopard will behave with fresh installs and with older operating systems. Will users need to install Leopard first when swapping in a new hard drive, for example? Recent evidence points to no, but we won’t know for sure until tomorrow.

I’m sure many of you are going to have questions about the installation process, upgrade requirements, and the like. Feel free to use with the comments below to help the process along as the Apple faithful adopt yet another new operating system.

I was just installing the Garage Band update on my Mac mini, when lo and behold, upon checking again at completion for updates, the 10.5.8 cumulative update appeared.

I’ve yet to update my mini to 10.5.7, because of reported issues with outputting to 720p resolution, which is the resolution of the TV I have it connected to. 10.5.8 appears to fix display resolution issues, as stated in the update description itself.

It also claims to bring the usual bug fixes and security enhancements we’ve come to expect from incremental updates, in addition to solutions for AirPort connectivity and reliability issues, Bluetooth connectivity problems, and sluggish startup times. My iMac has had some AirPort hiccups from time to time, which I’ve actually just learned to live with, but hopefully 10.5.8 gets rid of even those minor annoyances.